Future Plant Diversity in Tropical Rainforests

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Catherine Medrano Research Question #2 14 March 2013 Future Plant and Animal Diversity in Tropical Rainforests Within the last 50 years deforestation has taken 17% of the Amazon’s land area and imposes a major impact on plant and animal species (WorldWildLife.Org/threats/deforestation). Frustrations over the biodiversity in the tropics have created a sense of turmoil in which scientists are concerned with political judgment. Political officials have protested the idea of the future loss of biodiversity to be inadequate and extremely low. Evidence has founded that with the increased deforestation and population rates the human race is at terrible risk of not only loss of resources but of habitat loss due to extinction rates (Bradshaw et al., 2009). These findings can conclude that with increased exposure to deforestation plants and animals are limited in habitat reformation and thus cause problematic extinction rates for the future. Based on these concerns I can attempt to answer the question: how does deforestation influence future extinction rates and challenges on major plant and animal species in tropical forests? The hypothesis for several authors in the Conservation Biology stated, “We expect many of the hotspot endemics to have either become extinct or- because much of the habitat loss is recent-to be threatened with extinction” (Brooks et al., 2002). With this hypothesis I can infer an answer prompted by experimental results to relate to habitat loss due to deforestation and extinctions in the future. The vast areas of forests are known as a “hotspot” of the world which means that within it is a vast amount of a variety of species and organisms from plants and animals, containing 1500 epidemic plant species. Over the years these “hotspots”, covered over 12% of the earth’s surface area and as the future approaches and human activities increase and the

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